


Melted and Molded

by Casstea



Series: Lava and Glass [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 11:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casstea/pseuds/Casstea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their Types were what society defined them as, it was not how they defined themselves.</p><p>(Or James' story as a Lava and Q's story as a Glass have different beginnings but the same ending)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. James' Story

**Author's Note:**

> This is based in the same universe as [Handle With Care](http://archiveofourown.org/works/745597). It's probably best to read that story first then this one.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own James Bond, this is written for fun and not for profit.
> 
> For the 00Q bb chat crew who are all awesome.

He first found out his Type when he had been six years old.

James had been playing with the matches with Daddy when his skin had cracked and broken apart, glowing a dull red. He had been scared, but Daddy had told him not to worry and showed his own hand which was cracked and broken just like James’.

 _Lava,_ that’s what his mother explained he was when he had been sitting in bed staring at his hands in confusion.

 _Everyone has a Type James,_ Mummy had said, _you’re like the fire that builds and creates the earth._

x-x-x

At ten years old, James had learnt that his Type wasn’t all a good thing.

He had been talking to Mary, who was a normal human with no Type at all. She had been crying because Michael and his cronies had been bulling her again, saying that she was worthless because she didn’t have anything special about her.

James hadn’t meant to burn her hand when he had hugged her. He remembered being shouted at by the teacher, by Mary’s parents, being told that he was a violent boy, dangerous and volatile.

James had sent Mary a little card with _I’m sorry_ on it. He had waited outside her window when she had opened it, hiding in the bushes. Her burn had meant she had struggled with the envelope, but there had been a smile on her face. She had looked down at James, waving slightly with her bandaged arm.

 _It’s alright,_ she mouthed.

x-x-x

His parents had died in a skiing accident.

After Mary, James had been so careful with his Type. However, the grief and shock had taken over, as he retreated into the bolt hold Daddy had shown him two years previously, locking himself in so Kincade couldn’t get to him.

As he had cried, curling up into a ball, his hands had begun to crack again, red lines oozing through his pale skin, turning it as  black as charcoal. Yet the lines hadn’t stopped at his wrists as they always had done in the past, no they trailed their way up James’ arms like vines. His clothes had caught fire in the heat James’ skin gave off, sizzling away into dust. Even his tears evaporated as he cried, hissing as the water hit his skin.

It was only when James had stopped crying hours later, that he realised that his clothes lay in tatters around him. His skin slowly begun to revert to its usual flesh-toned colour after a while, the red lines healing up and the dark colours fading.

Yet the smell of burning stayed with him as he shivered in the tunnel. His head hurt, and he could feel tears pricking the corners of his eyes as he remembered why he was down here.

_You’re like the fires that build the earth._

That’s what Mummy had told him. Yet how could he be so brave and bold to be like the Earth? James looked at the rocks around him, their sharp edges and harsh lines created by man’s attempt to chisel away at the surface and create a path nature had not intended.

When James crawled out of the hole three days later, hungry, tired, and cold; there was a hardness in his eyes. He had to be strong like the earth, he had to be like the molten lava which created the very ground he walked on.

So when family and friends offered their false smiles and empty words, James always remembered the ground at his feet. He would be solid, he would be strong.

And he would not fall.

x-x-x

When James lost Vesper, it had hurt.

It had hurt for so many reasons. She had been the one who challenged him, who stared right back at him and wasn’t terrified. She was an Air type, as Spirit in the common tongue, and like her Type she would flit and float around James, drawing him out of his shell he had placed himself into.

It was only when she had been drowning, the weight of the water choking the air from her lungs, that he realised how delicate she really was. It had only been when he had held her lifeless body in his hands, that he realised she was far more than her hollow bones and delicate features. The force of her personality made her who she was, she was far more than her Type.

And maybe, so was he.

x-x-x

He knew that a person was certainly more than their Type when he shook hands with Q.

Love at first sight, some would say.

And on this particular occasion, James would agree.

x-x-x

People who were unobservant failed to see how brilliant Q was.

They were sitting in a restaurant, one of Q’s choosing, as he animatedly talked about his latest code. The remains of their dinner lay in front of them, and now James was just waiting for the lady to return with the bill.

“So you understand it?” Q said, looking at James with his bright eyes. James smiled uncertain as he took a long sip of his wine.

“Sort of?”

“What happens if you ever need to get into your computer?” Q asked, “when I’m not there.”

“But you always will be there,”

“Just hypothetically,”

“I’ll use google,”

“I don’t know whether to be insulted or honoured that you consider me as intelligent as a search engine with access to the largest database in history,” Q remarked, adjusting his glasses.

“You’re more intelligent,” James smiled. He wanted to reach across and grab Q’s hand, but he couldn’t at the moment, not with Q’s fingers showing his Type. It was the balance they had to strike in their relationship.

“More?” Q asked, frowning at James, “Do you want another exploding pen?”

“I can complement you without wanting more gadgets,” James smirked. The couple on the table next to them, a Wood and an Air, looked positively mortified at the idea of an exploding pen.

Their loss.

The attendant returned with the bill, which James paid careful to ensure that he didn’t activate his Type as he typed in the pin code. He had experienced a nasty accident once when he hadn’t concentrated, and managed to make the pin code machine explode.

Q had found it hilarious.

As the receipt was handed back to James along with his card, Q asked;

“So where we going now?”

“I thought it would be a great time to go for a walk up to the top of Parliament Hill.”

Q raised an eyebrow in question.

 _Come on,_ James thought. The weight of the ringbox in his pocket felt about ten times heavier as Q’s mind whirred as to why James would want to hike to the top of Parliament hill just before dusk.

“Fine then,” Q said, “Mr Mysterious.”

“I’m not being mysterious,” James shot back, “I’m being nice.”

Q narrowed his eyes.

“Come on,” James said, pulling on his coat and carefully placing his arm around Q to make sure he didn’t touch the parts of Q which were still in his fragile Glass form, “I’m sure we can make it in about under an hour.”

“Thirty minutes if we have a quick pace,” Q’s mouth pulled into a slight smile, “did Google maps tell you one hour?”

James chuckled.

“I said you were cleverer than Google.” 


	2. Q's Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Tracionn, who always leaves me such lovely and wonderful comments!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own James Bond, this is written for fun and not for profit.
> 
> A/N: Thanks for all the kudos and comments on the previous chapter! Now for Q's side of the story...
> 
> (Please ignore any inaccuracies with either the opening times of London's park, or the true nature of igneous rocks. I am a mere ficcer in search of fluff and pretty imagery)

Q had been a boy called Charlie when he had first found out that he was a Glass.

He had been sitting in the boy’s toilets waiting for the bullies to go away when his hands had turned transparent. He had thought it was beautiful, delicate, fragile just like he had felt.

The adults hadn’t agreed.

They had told him to hide his type, to never tell anyone. It was as if it were better if he didn’t _have_ at Type, so when he watched some of the girls turn their skin into wood or the boys turn their limbs to water, he simply sat on his hands in the corner of the playground and tried to count to 1,000 before break was over.

His personal best had been 898.

x-x-x

As he got older, Charlie got better at hiding his Type.

He would spend his time working with computers and technology instead of humans. Charlie preferred them to humans, they didn’t think he was weak or feeble. Instead, as he wrote lines upon lines of code, he felt for once in his life he had power to change something. It made him realise that being a Glass was not something which made him weak. Society deemed it fine that glass was used to hold up floors, to be used in windows, to be moulded and mixed with other chemicals to create wondrous objects.

Glass was not weak, it was just invisible. People would look _through_ glass instead of looking at it.

Charlie wore that invisibility like a cloak of protection. It made the bullies go away, it made the snide comments go away. Just keep his head down and focused, and no one would ever notice him.

The only downside was that Charlie was always lonely.

x-x-x

When he got recruited to MI6, Charlie had been managing to scam the British Government with his computer skills for nearly two years. It was a challenge, how long and how far could he go before he was caught.

It wasn’t his fault he was caught. He had purposefully set the trip in the system to alert the authorities to where he was. Why he did it, Charlie couldn’t really remember. It had been a moment of desperation, a moment of need for _someone_ or _something_ to just _happen_ to him. He didn’t care about where his life would take him, or what people thought of him. He had been so good at hiding behind his invisible cloak that even he could no longer see his true worth.

So when the stern lady from MI6 had appeared at his door with a file which detailed every aspect of his life, he thought that she would just look straight through him. Instead, she praised him in her own manner, she said that he had achieved what no one else could ever achieve.

And she wanted to give him a job.

x-x-x

Q and James stood on top of Parliament hill, the light dimming around them.

Just as Q had estimated, it took them just over half an hour to walk up the hill. The lights of the city below flickered, now becoming visible against the inky backdrop. No one else was up here at this time of evening, and the only sound Q could hear was the gentle whisper of the breeze as it drifted through the trees.

“James?” Q asked, looking at James. The agent had been acting oddly all evening, and it was starting to unnerve Q. James never acted this cagey around him when he was _happy._ Sure, James would be tight lipped when he returned home from a difficult mission, but then he would glower and snarl like a wounded animal. No, James was not acting like that at all, instead he seemed to have a spring in his step like an excited school boy.

“Yes?”

“What’s going on?” Q eyed James as the agent pulled him closer. Q felt his fingers begin to tingle as they changed to glass, his nerves activating his Type.

James smiled in reply, gently pulling Q into a kiss.

“Surprise,” James said, an excited glimmer in his eye.

 _“What?”_ Q asked, exasperated. James smiled nervously, as he slowly slid to one knee, his hands going into the pocket he had been fiddling with all evening.

 _James,_ Q thought, his eyes widening in shock. He couldn’t stop his type from showing, his fingers and hands turning to Glass in a mere moment.

“Q,” James said, his voice sounding nervous. Q smiled, an nervous laugh breaking out from between his lips. Sure, James Bond was renowned for his flirting techniques.

But touching moments? Now that was a totally different thing.

“I first met you in the National Gallery-”

“Where you called me a youth,” Q said, smiling at the memory. James rolled his eyes at Q’s interruption as he pulled out his hand from his pocket to reveal a dark ring box. Q smiled as he saw James’ fingers were beginning to crack and smoulder as his Type showed.

“Yes,” James continued, “but then I do remember you calling me old. Anyway from that beginning I realised that you are not just any ordinary Quartermaster. You’re the person who looked beyond my Type and my name and drew me out of my shell.”

“And you’re the person who saw me when no-one else did,” Q said softly.

“You’re ruining my speech,” James remarked.

“You have a speech?”

“Detailed and long, just as you like it,” James said, his tone insinuating his real meaning behind his words.

Q smirked.

“I’ll skip the speech then,” James said, opening the ring box carefully. In the dim light, Q could see two rings nestled in the fabric, one which looked like it was made from rock, and the other like it was made from Glass.

“Will you marry me?” James said, taking out the ring made from rock, and holding it up to Q.

“Yes,” Q replied, as he took the proffered ring carefully from James, careful not to touch James’ burning hands, and slipped the ring onto his finger.

“Lava,” Q felt the smile on his face was going to split it in two. He could feel his Type spreading across his body as he took the other ring out of the box, the smooth glass surface the same as his fingers.

“And will you marry me?” Q said, handing the ring to James, “James Bond?”

James smiled and took the ring from Q, slipping it onto his own finger. He must have made it a composite structure, as the ring did not melt on his cracked and broken hands.

“Yes,” he replied.


End file.
